Since the much-larger ID1, with its dual powered-subs, was not on deck for audio duties during my tour, I got treated to a very fulsome sounding system with “the little guy” fronting. The little stand-mounts, called the “Classic Audiophile” edition, is a little odd-looking. The first thing to see, past the rather vanilla casework, is that the mid/woofer driver looks for all the world like a passive radiator. That can’t be right, thought I, listening. I mean, there is real bass happening! Turns out, I wasn’t just hallucinating (it could happen) — that driver is not a passive — it’s just a totally flat driver that the literature calls “a 6.5″ Glass fiber / RPF™ Composite Solid Piston w/ NBR Surround”. Alrighty then. Mystery solved.

Given that I wasn’t really sure what to make of this room from the get-go, I still found it fun. Overall, I thought sound was warm, if just a bit tipped up, but given both the limits of the room and the size of the loudspeakers, I didn’t have much to complain about. Stereophilerecently reviewed this speaker, so I’ll defer to them on the specs and design.

An Oppo BDP-105 and McIntosh Labs MT-10 turntable ($10,500) fed into a McIntosh C2500 tube pre ($7,000) and from thence to a MC452 stereo power amp ($8,500). Kimber Kable wired up the system.

I fully intended to get back around to this room, to see if the bigger speakers would take a bow, but it just didn’t happen.